Here’s my first video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DszONdVjvZ8

You can see the recorder at 01:32.

The 6700U had a fully-electronic tuner as opposed to the turn-knob ones common at the time. The user could therefore tune any of the 16 (20?) tuning buttons to any channel; you didn’t have to accept all existing channels, just the ones you cared about. Also, the tuning was by means of small knobs for each “slot.” We were able to tune the TV cable “mid-band” between channels 6 and 7, to pick up additional channels. Those channels were not normally available without paying for a fancier cable box.

The digital timer allowed two-week advance programming, but didn’t support “all-weekday” programs. You could do, e.g. every Thursday or all seven days, but not Mon-Fri.

Now here’s a funny anecdote. Andy Hertzfeld, later of Macintosh fame, was one of my colleagues at Apple at the time. His 6700U developed a clock problem: it ran exactly four times faster than real time. As engineers, we all knew that some divider chip had failed. But Andy didn’t want to part with the unit and wait for warranty service. Being a resourceful software engineer, he simply wrote a program on the Apple ][. He entered the date/time of the desired TV program, then the current clock reading—which could be almost any “random” day/hour/minute. The program then told him what to set for the recording, having computed where the VCR’s overspeed clock would be when the program aired.

Another anecdote. We used to line up a half-dozen of the VCRs and copy tapes. Just plop ‘em on an unused desk, cable ‘em all up, and push all the buttons. This was bad enough, but then Steve Wozniak wanted a tape of the newly-released “The Empire Strikes Back.” He bribed a San Diego projectionist to “borrow” the print from the cinema and drive it to Los Angeles in the dead of night. After several hours in a transfer facility, he had a 3/4″ U-Matic professional copy of the film print, and the projectionist high-tailed it back to the cinema to return the print. That tape also made its way into the copying chain. We were perhaps the first half-dozen people with videotape copies of the film. (I discarded my heavily-letterboxed copy years ago…)

Woz later mentioned that the 4000-foot film reels wouldn’t fit the 3000-foot tables on the transfer machine, so they spent extra time cutting the print into sections that would fit, then spliced it back into its original form. Film companies, however, are very cautious that nobody steals frames from a film, lest they be printed into illegal still photos. The prints were examined to detect frame-stealing. Woz never asked whether the splices got the projectionist into any trouble; an occasional splice could be due to a film break, but not several at regular intervals.

To quote from Tim Stoffel’s Quadruplex Park:
http://www.lionlamb.us/quad/ampex.html
In use, the operator wore it on his back while handling a heavy, bulky camera. (It took great strength to be a videographer in those days! In fact, legend has it that the machine bent the dummy that was wearing it at the first NAB show where it was exhibited!)
http://www.lionlamb.us/quad/vr3000_1m.jpg